Today, I wanted to format the newsletter a little differently. I have 10 pieces of low hanging fruit I compiled over the past week, looking at my personal meeting notes.
1. Subtitles on your ads.
If you remember my email a couple weeks ago, I dove deep into how you should think about making video ads in a way that is extremely effective and conversion friendly. However, one thing most people still forget is subtitles!
They don't need to be anything too fancy. In fact, more often than not, the simpler and non-styled ones will out-perform those which are in brand fonts + colors. According to Verizon, 92% of mobile users watch video with sound off, which means the 20 minutes you spend adding subtitles could give you the highest ROI you've ever seen on a 20 minute period!
2. Similarly, make your blog easy to read.
Don't focus on using your fancy brand fonts, bright beautiful colors, or graphics that make the overall page hard to understand. When I was testing a variety of publisher websites where we hosted sponsored editorial content, we tested sites like BuzzFeed, Refinery29, PureWow, Babe, Digg, Forbes, TheHustle, and others. My guess was that the winning sites would be Refinery29 and BuzzFeed, but the winners were actually Digg and TheHustle.
The reason their sites outperformed multi-hundred-million dollar media companies, is because:
- The sites had little or no programmatic ads to distract the reader.
- The size of the font, and the fonts used, were very easy to read.
- If they had pop-ups, they weren't distracting or a turn off, in the sense that you wanted to get out of that page.\
- From a mobile perspective, the page was CLEAN.
If you're a brand and make your money by selling products, focus on always making things easy for your consumers, readers, audience, listeners, etc. Get to the punch line without sacrificing them for minuscule amounts of engagement.
3. Syndicate your reviews properly.
This is something many brands don't do, but is another very easy lift: syndicating your reviews across Google Search and Google Shopping.
With the recent developments of iOS 14.5, and what Google is working on to combat it, Google Shopping and Google's overall platform for merchants is going to become very powerful. That said, it takes minimal effort to take the reviews you've been collecting and make sure they show up within Google's platform. Caraway does a phenomenal job at this:
4. Plug into the revenue side of publishers/affiliates.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about setting up your affiliate platform (and here's a deal from Refersion to do it). Taking it one step further, there's a company called Skimlinks you should be aware of.
Skimlinks is a technology company that sits in the CMS (content management system) of incredibly high-authority publishers. Think brands under Hearst, Condé Nast, BuzzFeed, etc. When a BuzzFeed or TOWN & COUNTRY mentions your brand/product, Skimlinks automatically turns that into an affiliate link, giving the publisher an incentive to both include your brand/product, and properly syndicate/push it across social, email, and other channels.
Skimlinks plugs into your affiliate platform as an affiliate, and you pay Skimlinks directly. They deal with paying the publishers.
Learn more about becoming a Skimlinks merchant by clicking here.
BONUS: Once you find which publishers are driving the best affiliate results for you, reach out to them directly to do something in a larger capacity.
5. Leverage people in your brand's network or cap table.
If you have an influencer on your cap table or who's involved with your brand in a deep way, get creative. There are only so many times you can ask them to push your product/brand to their existing followers.
Instead, put together a gifting or celebrity seeding campaign where you send out a package that not only includes your product, but also something to make it fun and post-worthy.
If you're a tequila, you might add shot glasses, confetti poppers, and a large ice cube mold. If you're JUDY and you run a collaborative product with Poo~Pourri, you might send a cardboard toilet full of flowers.
When it comes from that influencer, you have a much higher likelihood of getting that tagged story/mention. People love supporting people, never discount that!
6. Make it easy to re-order their favorite products.
This is for those of you who have consumable products: protein powders, supplements, deodorant, a face cleanser, bottles of water, etc. You know they're going to run out, and you can probably guess by your repeat purchase rates, when they'll run out. Make it easy to re-order, whether it's with a Batch QR code (see below), or with a perfectly-timed email or SMS message from PostScript.
Check out Batch's example below. If you like it, I recommend signing up on their website for a demo to get your store onboard.
7. Turn Instagram's comment section into your customer service center.
Chances are, if you run ads, you get comments asking questions. Based on my experience, 99% of those questions are asking the same 5-10 things: shipping, quality, ingredients, how it's made, etc. It all depends on what you're advertising.
Instead of directing people to customer service or DMs (where other people don't see the answer), utilize Instagram hashtags to consolidate the answers in a hidden corner you can link to.
Hypothetically, if someone asks what is in your sports drink, ingredient wise, just comment back "You can see our ingredients panel here: #DRINKBARCODEFAQ" and have posts to all your common questions. You can post from a secondary account using the hashtag to make sure posts populate, and don't clutter your main account.
8. Get a second set of eyes on your customer journey.
If you think you've got a great site, nice! But, it doesn't mean everyone else does. Ask your mom, your grandma, your uncle who's had one too many drinks, or a younger sibling for a quick journey audit. See if they can get to the products that are right for them, pick their variants, understand what they're getting, and checkout in less than 3-4 minutes. Ideally, it should be even faster.
Oddit, which helps DTC brands make stronger websites, generously offered to giveaway a full website audit. You can enter on this page here.
Since only one of you will win the giveaway, I asked Oddit to give pre-negotiated rates to anyone who wants a proper website audit. I found Oddit after personally using it and realizing its value, when it comes to conversion rate and AOV. I highly recommend them. If you're not satisfied, they'll give you a full refund, too.
Single-Page Oddit: click to learn more
Full-Site Oddit: click to learn more
9. Find ways to add free incremental impressions and revenue.
If your product has incredible product-market fit, there's a good chance you just need more impressions. Install co-op Commerce's Shopify app and leverage their existing network of top-tier DTC brands.
Let's say you are Black Wolf Nation. co-op Commerce's algorithm determines that a customer who shops at Black Wolf Nation, might also be currently buying a Blendjet, and when that Blendjet customer finishes their checkout, Black Wolf Nation shows up on the Thank You/Order Confirmation page.
Your "fee" is showing the widget on your own Thank You/Order Confirmation page, but it all happens after someone has already placed an order, so your conversion rate is not affected at all.
10. Accelerate your customer's path to purchase.
If you sell a product with multiple variants (flavors, scents, styles, colors, sizes, etc) help your customer find that item faster and get to checkout.
On-site tools like Octane AI's quiz do a great job at this. You can also move that experience one step higher in the funnel and use a tool like Paloma to help make those decisions in FB Messenger or Instagram DMs (coming soon).
